500.A15A4 General Committee/100: Telegram
The Acting Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 23—12:01 a.m.]
362. The General Commission will finish its discussion of the resolution tomorrow noon at which time the Conference will hold a plenary session to adopt the resolution. The indications are that the resolution will be adopted by the votes of all states except the former enemy powers. Of these Hungary, Bulgaria and Austria have stated that they will abstain and Germany has indicated that she would vote against the resolution. As this would mean that the resolution would fail of unanimity in the Conference it would not be carried. However as the majority vote of the General Commission would enable [Page 313] all the procedural sections of the resolution to be carried on, the program of Conference work would presumably go on as outlined in the resolution. It would only mean that there would be no adoption of the agreed on previous reports in chapter 2 of the resolution and that thus Germany would be responsible for preventing agreement on the first step in the matter of air armaments, artillery, chemical and bacteriological warfare and tanks.
Nadolny’s speech this afternoon was extremely temperate in tone but was a long indictment of the resolution for not going far enough, of the Conference for not taking into account the situation of Germany and implicitly of France for blocking all measures of disarmament and particularly for failing to satisfy the absolute demand of the German people, which was necessary to satisfy their national honor namely on equality of treatment.
At the beginning of his speech he paid high tribute to the purposes and nature of the generous initiative of the President but developed the idea that this had been practically negatived in the steps taken thus far to carry it out. At the ending of his speech he read a declaration of his Government which concluded as follows:
“The German Government must consequently insist that its doubts be eliminated by recognition without further delay of the equality of all states as regards national security and the application of all the provisions of the convention. In as much as the different questions arising from the application of the principle of equality of rights require clarification the German Government is prepared immediately to enter upon negotiations with the interested states. The German Government must immediately make clear that it cannot undertake to continue its collaboration in case a solution satisfactory to Germany on this definite point has not been reached before the reconvening of the Conference.”
Nadolny’s intransigent speech was followed by a long and eloquent speech by Apponyi of Hungary who while joining in much of the reasoning of the German representative and while claiming equally with him the ultimate right to equality of treatment in any final treaty that might come out of the Disarmament Conference would not insist on the immediate solution of this question and considering that the steps contained in the resolution while they did not go far enough altogether to please his country were nevertheless of sufficient value as first steps to enable Hungary to permit the onward course of the deliberations by withholding its vote on the resolution and thus allowing it to be adopted in unanimity. He was confident that justice would ultimately be done.
Sir John Simon in one of the best speeches of the Conference made a most eloquent plea for reasonableness on the part of the Germans [Page 314] pointing out that the question of equality of treatment had no part in a resolution which was destined to indicate the points on which agreement had been reached and the methods of study for other points upon which some measure of agreement had been attained. He likewise pointed out that chapter 4 of the resolution reserved political questions and that other nations had made concessions in this connection equal to that requested of Germany and therefore that the Conference would re-assemble with Germany’s position in this matter entirely unprejudiced by the present resolution and with it was hoped progress made along the lines of disarmament in which assuredly Germany had the greatest possible interest.
The Germans endeavored to explain informally that their speech was less intransigent than it sounded particularly as the course of the debate indicated that should they vote no to the resolution especially in the plenary session of the Conference they would be in danger of being quite alone. It is not impossible that they might vote no to the resolution in the General Commission where it can be passed by a majority vote and abstain from voting in the plenary session.